And he yanked her out of her chair.
Dazed, Nada stood up and followed her husband out of the room, as everyone looked on. And so it was that she went home. But ever since, she has felt totally estranged from “that man,” as she now calls him. .
How could he do such a thing, and in front of all those people? What did he expect, that I wouldn’t cry over my brother? Since when was crying forbidden? He was my brother, after all! Had it been his brother, I can assure you, the world in its entirety would have heard the crying. But he acted like that because it was my brother! And why wouldn’t he let me wear black? He says one shouldn’t for a martyr, a so-called war hero. . I’d like to know what that is anyway! What does it mean to be a martyr? Does it mean Ahmad’s not dead? Martyr or not, you’re dead, regardless. I didn’t agree, but he wouldn’t let me say what I thought, or anyone else for that matter. How, how could we leave the corpse in the hospital like that and not bring it home? They didn’t even wash him, they buried him the way he was! And we were made to feel like strangers. It was Nadeem who spoke with the shabab, as if he were Ahmad’s family, while my father stood there like a complete stranger. And after all that, he expected me to stop crying! The truth is, he was jealous of Ahmad. . Imagine, being jealous of a dead man! To think that I have a husband who is jealous of my dead brother! What a husband! Oh God, what a husband!
Well, of course I love him. . can a woman not love her husband? And he used to be such a fine husband, too; he was hard-working and life was good, al-hamdulillah! My mother had had her doubts, though. She thought a pinball arcade was basically gambling. “I’m not marrying my daughter off to a gambler,” she said. But it was Father who settled it — “He’s a good boy,” he told her, “from a decent family, and he’s also from the neighborhood.” I agreed with Father. Nadeem was a handsome young man, he was full of life. I’d see him driving about in his little car, and when he offered me a ride to school one day, he looked at me in that very special way, all smiles and charm. So I agreed. He was better than my father, a civil servant. Civil servants have such an insufferable life! All Father ever did was tell us about telephone exchanges and the new electronic systems the new minister had ordered. He was obsessed with telephones! And then there was no more work for him during the war. Whereas with Nadeem, business went right on, people didn’t stop playing pinball. Even when there was no electricity, business carried on-I don’t know how, we had no electricity for six months! He told me he’d bought an electric generator, and that he was also selling ice cream on the side. Things were even better than before, he said.
He was rarely home though. And when he came back late at night, he reeked of araq… and something else. . the Lord alone knows what! He was different somehow. I knew what he was like when he drank araq, but this smell that was on his breath, this was different. But I didn’t dare ask.
The truth is he was smoking hashish. When people said he was passing joints around with “the boys,” I didn’t want to know. According to him, business had improved, things were good, and he wasn’t going to be scared off by the war and the shells falling on our heads.
It was Ahmad who told me. He was back from the frontlines, he’d come home to a hero’s welcome.
“War is war,” he said “and it is our duty to fight.”
I told him I didn’t agree and that Nadeem was right. Why was it our duty to fight? We’re not fighting a war, we’re rushing to our deaths. I wanted to say something else too but he cut me off and gave me this little lecture. . I don’t know how he came up with it.
“That was true a long time ago,” he said, “in the days of our forebears, under the Ottomans, when Father’s uncles all perished in Safarbarlek — they died of hunger and squalor, not from the fighting. But all that’s over now, we’re no longer led to our death like sheep to slaughter. We are the masters of our destinies, we are fashioning our own future.”
So I said to him, “You know how it is, Nadeem being a family man and all…”
That really set him off. “Your husband’s no man!” he ranted. “He’s just using the kids as an excuse not to join up. If that’s what it really is, why is he spending all his time hanging out with those guys?”
“Which guys?” I asked.
“Forget it, forget I ever said anything.”
I asked again, and he said the same thing.
“I want to know,” I insisted.
So he began telling me about this bunch of so-called combatants who were nothing but hooligans and gangsters and who hung out in Nadeem’s shop smoking dope. “They’re the ones who do the looting,” he said, “during the fighting.” Nadeem didn’t accompany them, he added, but he had opened his doors to them, and the shop had become a den of iniquity and vice.
“Not only is that wrong,” he said, “but it’s shameful. Once we take over, they’ll all go to jail.”
“Including Nadeem?” I asked.
“He’ll be the first to go.”
Now I understood why Ahmad rarely visited us anymore, and why he and Nadeem had fallen out, but as a woman what could I do? I had tried, once, to tell him. .
It was the middle of the night, and I wasn’t able to sleep. I was sitting up in the hallway, I’d settled our little boy there, the shelling was so bad that night. . It was two in the morning, I thought the shelling was never going to end… I was so afraid. . Every time I heard a shell ripping through the sky with that high-pitched whistle and then landing with a wailing thud nearby, I would huddle over my little boy to try and protect him with my body. Nadeem wasn’t home, and I was really worried about him that night. I was sure he’d been hit. But there was nothing I could do except wait, and weep. As I lay huddled against my little boy, crying, he finally arrived. He opened the front door and walked in humming, as if nothing was wrong, as if all those shells were nothing at all. He refused to lie down with us in the hallway and said I should come to bed as usual.
“And what about the boy?” I asked.
“Leave him there if you like.”
“But I’m afraid.”
“There’s no need to be.”
So I followed him into the bedroom. He undressed, put on his pajamas, and lay down. The room reeked of that strange smell. I snapped, I felt I couldn’t take any more — what kind of a life was this, by God, my mother was right!
“I won’t have it,” I told him. I swear that’s all I said. I didn’t say anything bad; all I said was that he was smoking dope, that the shop had become a hashish den, and that he wasn’t looking after us properly. Honestly, I didn’t say anything.
He went ballistic! He hurled himself against me and started hitting me with his fists and gnashing his teeth like a madman. How dare he. . He’d never done that before. . this was the first time. . I couldn’t cry out, I was afraid to wake the little one. He just kept hitting me and hitting me, and, in the end, I couldn’t hold out any longer, I bit down on the pillow and began to sob. The blows kept coming as he screamed and cursed and carried on, saying things I would be ashamed to remember, let alone repeat!
Now, honestly, do I look like a whore to you? He told me, his wife, that I was a whore! He said all women were whores, and he could do as he pleased. And, then, he took me, you understand what I mean, he had sex with me! Can you imagine? I didn’t want to, I told him, but he just did as he pleased. He slept with me, and then he sat up in bed and told me to make him a cup of coffee!